February 16th, 2012Top Story How to Find Your Creative Sweet Spot By Thorin Klosowski Everyone has a creative sweet spot—a time during the day when you're just better than your normal self. Studies show this! So the question is, when is yours? Let's find out. We've all found ourselves in the creative zone at some point. It's the moment when you realize the perfect solution to a problem and you start acting it out immediately without worrying about failure. It seems impossible to replicate, but science has shown we all have points in the day where we're more creative than others. The trick is trying to find your creative sweet spot. Let's take a look at the science to kick things off and then move on to some tricks and tools you can use to find your own. The Science Behind Your Creativity In the big picture, science has ignored the idea of creativity until relatively recently. It wasn't until 1950 when an American Psychological Association Presidential Address by psychologist JP Guilford suggested that creativity was worth researching. Which is to say, in broad terms, the research is still young. Subsequently, we have a few different theories on when we're most creative. Here's a look at some of our most creative times. You're likely most creative when you're groggy: It's thought that problem-solving comes most naturally when you're unfocused and you allow your brain to wander. In a study published in 2011 in the journal Thinking and Reasoning, researchers found that people were more likely to come up with creative solutions to problems when they were tired. For some, this meant in the morning, for others it was the afternoon or evening. Obviously it depends on your body. Being drunk helps creativity: Similar to the idea above, a study last year by researchers at the University of Illinois found that you are more creative when you're drunk. The idea is the same as the example above because it reinforces the idea that when you allow your brain to meander it can solve problems more creatively. Exercise can make you more creative: Research has shown that exercise can cause a creative burst. The idea here is that when you get your body going and push it you're unfocused and can latch onto more creative ideas. We may even be more creative when we're asleep: A 2004 study published in the journal Nature suggests we're more likely to come up with creative solutions to big problems when we sleep on them and look at the information again first thing in the morning. Creativity is linked to scheduling: A study published in 2010 in the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity links time management and creativity together as being mutually beneficial to each other. Basically, if you're good at managing your time and creating to-do lists, there's a positive correlation to your creative time. The implication is that you can schedule for and decide to be creative, which is exactly what we'll be looking how to do. Notice some trends in all this research? Contrary to what we might think, we're the most creative when we're at a non-optimal mental level. This time is different for everyone, but capturing it isn't as hard as you think. Since capitalizing on that time is key to coming up with new and fresh ideas, let's take a look at some of the ways you can time and track your day to find your creative sweet spot. Photo by Allan Siew. A Systematic Approach to Identifying Your Creative Sweet Spot There's a good chance the information above may have given you enough of a starting point for finding your creative sweet spot: If you have a pretty good idea of when you're at your most tired, for example, you may prefer to try that out as your sweet spot. If so, skip this section and read a bit about how to work your creative sweet spot into your schedule. If you'd like to approach things a little more analytically, though, that's what this section is about. We're all a bit different, so finding your creative sweet spot is going to take a little work. Before you can start rebooting our day, you'll need to collect data to work with. Over the course of the last week, I tried a few different methods to try and capture my own creative bursts and create a baseline schedule to compare them to. The kind of creative work you do may vary greatly from mine, but here's what I did. Track and Log Your Creative Insights Throughout the Day Since the bulk of my time throughout the day is spend in front of a computer, I used a time-tracking program to get a better idea of how I'm spending my day and what I'm spending it on. I also started digging into my revision history on documents and time stamping my notes. Here's a few tricks I picked up for tracking my creative bursts. Start with a spreadsheet: Create a spreadsheet like the one on the right with the days of the week running on the top and the time in half hour blocks running vertically. This is where we're going to stuff our data for our creative moments, our productive times, and our daily schedule (more on this in a second). Time-tracking software: Use time tracking app to get a better idea of when your productive points in the day happen. I had a sneaking suspicion they wouldn't line up with my creative insights, but we'll get to that below. I used RescueTime to help track my application usage to get an idea of when I was actively using software. This collects all your usage data in a webapp online. For now, download the free version, set it up, and let it run quietly in the background. We'll enter in the data at the end of the week. Google Docs Revision History: For myself, I wanted a way to track when and what I started typing. I realized Google Doc's Revision History would do the trick. If you're writing in Google Docs, click File > Revision History. On the right side of the screen, you can see every large revision you made in a text file. At the end of each day I went back and looked a the history to find the eureka moment for the post I wrote that day. For me, this was a single line that stuck out or a huge edit. In some cases, it was just a big block of text where I could tell it all started to make sense to me. Your version of this will be different, but it's easy to recognize. At the end of each day, make a note of the time of the eureka moment by dropping an X into your spreadsheet next to the time and day. Timestamp your notes: This works whether you're on the go or at home, but if you use sticky notes, a notepad app, or a spare receipt in your wallet, start writing the time an idea comes to you. These are the eureka moments when we solve a problem or come up with a new problem to solve. Consider these notes the spark of an idea. The ideas aren't always good, but they should be new. If you prefer smartphone notes consider an app like MomentDiary for iOS or Android to automatically stash the timestamp on your ideas. Let these sit for the week and we'll enter them on the spreadsheet at the end. Track Your Daily Schedule to Help You Find Clues Tracking your creativity is just part of this idea. In order to get a good understanding of your creative schedule, you also need to understand your daily schedule. It's not just about finding your most creative and productive moments based on time alone. It's also about seeing where the rest of your schedule fits in. To do this, you need a basic outline of your day. Each day track elements in your spreadsheet like: Wake time Breakfast Lunch Exercise Dinner Sleep time For good measure, toss in any details below the times that might have an effect on the numbers. Note peculiarities like if you were feeling a little sick one day, your morning ritual was screwed up, or if you ran an errand. Basically make a quick note of anything out of the ordinary you did (or didn't do) throughout the day so you can compare it to the rest of your data. Review the Data and Use Your Findings to Schedule Your Day and Take Advantage of Your Creative Sweet Spot Once you collect your data for a week it's time to turn all that information into something you can use. Let's go through the steps of assessing your data and take a look at how you can adjust your daily schedule to make the most out of your creative sweet spot. Collect All Your Creativity Data It's time to take all the data you collected and put all those details into your spreadsheet. For this, we'll assume creativity comes in two basic forms: the eureka moment and the productive moments. Let's take a look at how we can use all the information we collected over the last week to gauge both. Step 1: Grab all of your notes and other creative data you collected over the week. With your time stamps in hand, add an X for every note to the spreadsheet. These mark your eureka moments. If you're using the Google Docs trick listed above, you likely already have a few scattered around alongside your daily schedule. Step 2: Take a look at your software usage in RescueTime. Log in to your RescueTime Dashboard and click the task you're tracking under "All Categories." Set the graph to daily, then hourly. In front of you is a graph that that should show your application usage throughout the day. This is the baseline for your current software usage. Look at your peak usage in the software you use for creative ideas and integrate the information into your spreadsheet by coloring the cell backgrounds when you're productivity spikes. These are your productive creative moments. Step 3: Look at the schedule of your productivity, eureka moments, and your day-to-day activity. You should notice a trend of some kind. This might be that your eureka moments immediately follow (or proceed) the productive ones. Maybe you're most productive after lunch, but your creative notes are in the early morning. Take a look at the other details you entered as well. Is there a correlation between waking up late and when your ideas come? Does feeling ill have an effect? If so, you can likely ignore some of these stats and focus on the days that went well. If it's totally scattered, consider going through the process for another week. In my case, I learned that the bulk of my productivity came at a different time than my eureka moments. My eureka moments tend to revolve around my exercise time more than anything else. Out of 15 total notes, six of them were after exercise. Seven notes were taken between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., and the 11-11:30 block was the most common. What can you do with all this information? Let's look at how to rearrange your schedule to best take advantage of these moments. Tweak Your Schedule to Use Your Time Wisely We've talked before about integrating a dedicated thinking time into your schedule and that's essentially what we'll be doing here. This isn't just about thinking, it's about dedicating your time wisely and surrounding yourself with what you need to keep up your creative output. To some people, this means creating a block of time where you can let the muse speak. To others, it's more about rescheduling any problem-solving portions of your day when you're at your creative peak. I made a few adjustments to my schedule to take advantage of these moments. I scheduled my exercise time at 10:30 a.m. on most days. Afterwards, I take a short walk around the neighborhood to clear my head and come up with new ideas. Then I get to work on laying out the basics of my ideas before lunch and work through them afterwards because that's when my productivity is highest. I also noticed the bulk of my big edits in Google Docs come late in the day when I'm exhausted and early in the morning before I start (technically) working. Subsequently, I've set up two blocks of time for editing: one at 4:00 p.m. and another right after I wake up. Your solutions will be different, but the important part to factor into your schedule change is not just the time you made a lot of notes, but the triggers that cause them. For instance, if you notice a creativity boost after meetings, schedule creative time after every meeting. If it's when you're tired and groggy in the morning, schedule more time for your morning shower. If your schedule is set in stone these creative moments probably come within a specific block of time, so give yourself the tools you need to make use of them. Photo by Justin See. Creativity is an ambiguous thing, but we all have those times when we get the so-called eureka moments. Finding when and why those seemingly out-of-the-blue insights strike us is the first step to creating a schedule that's conducive to creativity. Whether it's being groggy in the morning, jogging in the afternoon, or after a few beers, knowing when you're in your creative sweet spot can help you embrace it. Do have tricks to embracing your creative moments or rescheduling your day around them? Share your tips in the comments.

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February 16th, 2012Top Story OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion: More iPhone-Like Than Ever By Adrian Covert and Sam Biddle Seemingly out of nowhere, Mountain Lion, the next version of the Apple's OS X operating system, is formally in the works and will be on our computers later this summer. Most intriguing is that it will further blur the lines between iOS and OS X, bringing apps like Messages, Notes, and Reminders along with utilities such as Notification Center and—finally—AirPlay mirroring from your Mac. Based on what Apple is revealing for now, many of the new features revolve bringing iOS functionality to the desktop. Not only do these new apps and features behave the same as their iOS analogs, but they seamlessly sync with those apps as well. Oh, and one other significant change: OS X updates are going to happen yearly now. But let's take a look at what's new right now. Messages Messages will completely replace iChat, allowing you to trade iMessages with iOS devices (but don't worry, it'll still support AIM, Gtalk, etc.). FaceTime has also been integrated into Messages, further consolidating all of Apple's messaging platforms. This could be the end of the awkward divide between iMessage, iChat and FaceTime. Notification Center The OS X version of Notifications behaves much like the iOS iteration, witha full drop down menu and banner updates. From the looks of things, Notification Center is looking to completely and utterly upstage Growl, which has served as the de facto OS X notification framework for years. iCloud Much like Apple is going after Growl, they're also going after services like Dropbox in a more pronounced way. Specifically, you can now upload documents from Mountain Lion to iCloud. Anytime you make a change to the document, any device accessing the doc will see the changes. But according to The Verge, Apple still isn't giving access to an iCloud file browser to see everything you have in your cloud. AirPlay Mirroring Finally, we now have the ability to push our computer screens to our televisions (provided you have an Apple TV). Mirroring is limited to 720p resolution and stereo audio, but that should be fine for most. Sadly the feature seems limited to mirroring, and not pushing system (or app-specific) audio to AirPlay speakers or Airport Express, but it's at least a step in the right direction. Reminders The same Reminders app that came to iOS 5 is now coming to Mountain Lion. The GPS functionality isn't here—not that it would be entirely useful if it were—but you can search through your reminders, set due dates and receive alerts. They basically ripped the to-do list out of iCal and made it more robust. Notes Write down a few notes on the mobile Notes app, and they'll appear on your desktop. The desktop version, however, has a few new tricks. You can pin notes to your desktop (remember stickies before they got pushed into the widgets layer?). You can also drag and drop images into notes and send those off to other people. Gatekeeper Gatekeeper is a simple, preemptive security barrier for people worried about downloading malicious programs. Malware isn't much of a problem on OS X, but if you're worried, Gatekeeper will let you assign one of three set download levels: anything, Mac App Store only, or programs from trusted developers plus everything in the App Store. If something violates the security level you've set, you won't be able to install it. This should go well with the grandparents. Twitter Twitter is now built into OS X. Mountain Lion will let you, say, tweet photos and links directly from iPhoto and Safari, and every time you're mentioned or hit with a direct message, you'll get an automatic notification—no extra Twitter software needed. Game Center The iOS Game Center has always been a neglected backwater territory for Apple, so Mountain Lion is pushing it right onto your desktop. You'll get to plug into the same leader boards and friend-finding available on your phone, but now it's on your laptop! Hey! It's unclear whether just Mac gamers will be able to go at it with each other or if iOS is invited. Share Sheets You know that arrow icon on your iPhone? The one that you click to share photos from your albums? Now you'll be able to do that same thing throughout OS X apps, too: emailing your notes, uploading your videos, and tweeeeeeeeting will all be done from one handy icon. Oh, and Apple says there are over 100 new features on the way as well: Hundreds of new APIs give developers access to new core technologies and enhanced features within OS X. The Game Kit APIs tap into the same services as Game Center on iOS, making it possible to create multiplayer games that work across Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. A new graphics infrastructure underpins OpenGL and OpenCL and implements GLKit, first introduced in iOS 5, to make it easier to create OpenGL apps. Using Core Animation in Cocoa apps is easier than ever, and new video APIs deliver modern 64-bit replacements for low-level QuickTime APIs. Enhanced Multi-Touch™ APIs give developers double-tap zoom support and access to the system-wide lookup gesture. Kernel ASLR improves security through enhanced mitigation against buffer overflow attacks.

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Microsoft Is No Longer The Windows Company

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		Tech Entertainment Wall Street Markets Strategy Sports Lifestyle Politics Europe Video Latest Thursday, February 16, 2012 Microsoft Is No Longer The Windows Company For the longest time, the conventional thinking was that Windows was the most important part of Microsoft's business. Turns out that's changing. As you can see in this chart, the Business Division, which is home to Office group, has blown past the Windows division as growing percentage of the company's operating profit. The two are symbiotic. The more people using Windows, the more people will use Office. However, the Windows business is in decline as mobile gadgets like the iPad and iPhone and Android phones become more and more popular. Instead of denying what's happening, Microsoft needs to profit from it by offering Office for all of these new, huge platforms. (One thing to note: The chart looks like it's seasonal, and that right before a new Windows release, it dips. It's a little misleading though because Microsoft deferred revenue for a quarter, which accelerated the drop.)  Read » Also On SAI Today: Lady Gaga-Backed Startup Raises Over $4 Million From Top VC Firms What Do You Think Of Apple's New OS X Mountain Lion? [POLL] Here's What Dennis Crowley's Next Startup Will Look Like Groupon's Andrew Mason: We Were 'Toughened Up' By Quiet Period Advertisement Chart Of The Day: Zynga's Growth Plateaus CHART OF THE DAY: Tablets Are Going To Be Bigger Than You Think CHART OF THE DAY: Google is The Least Diversified Business In Tech Share this: Facebook Twitter Digg Reddit StumbleUpon LinkedIn The email address for your subscription is: dwyld.kwu.jobhuntportal11@blogger.com Change Your Email Address | Unsubscribe | Subscribe | Subscribe to the SAI RSS Feed Business Insider. 257 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010 Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

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